We are thrilled to announce that we were voted into the top five of the BC Hydro Community Champions contest and so will be receiving an award of $10,000 to put towards our environmental stewardship programming, connecting pollinators and people!

A sincere thanks to everyone who voted, whether once, twice or daily, it worked!

This award will give us the resources needed to put a new apiary into a community in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, along with our supportive, therapeutic, mentorship programming. Our programs focus on creating opportunities for community members to connect to nature, their peers, their support workers, and themselves.

Through the bees we build bridges of trust, connect people to supportive resources, increase access to nature, teach green skills, foster community pride and develop self worth with the individuals we work with. This last piece, the development of self worth, is at the heart of what we do. It can be life changing for individuals who have spent long years learning that they are not worth anything, to realize that they are cared for, that they have meaningful contributions to make, essentially that they are a valued part of a community.

As one of our beekeepers, Ian, said to me recently, when I asked him what the bees have meant to him: ” I went from having no hope, to having hope.”